Order Here | Little, Brown Books for Young Readers 2023 | Written by Chris Harris | a Junior Library Guild book

School Library Journal Best Books of 2023 | NPR’s Books We Love 2023 | Chicago Public Library Best Books of 2023 | 2024 ALA-ALSC Notable Books for Children

“I personally believe that this is one best-written children’s books I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. That mix of jokes that continually land and do new things I’ve never seen before combined with honest-to-goodness heart? How can I adequately convey to you how difficult that magic combo is to write? … Things are forever getting out of hand in a true Tsurumi title but somehow they’re able to make you feel safe at the same time. Like the reader is sitting in the eye of the storm while the world explodes around them. And nowhere is this better put to the test than in My Head Has a Bellyache. … Harris loves wordplay. Tsurumi loves to complement those words with hilarious madcap art. Put the two together and you’ve got yourself a powerhouse combination.

Said it once.

Said it twice.

Better than Shel Silverstein.

On shelves now.”—Betsy Bird, School Library Journal

The long anticipated follow up to the highly-accoladed, New York Times bestselling poetry collection I'm Just No Good at Rhyming, full of new surprising twists of wit and wordplay that solidifies Chris Harris's reputation as a comedic force to be reckoned with!
Starred Booklist review: “… will continue to delight the next generation of Shel Silverstein and Jon Scieszka fans.”

Starred Kirkus review: “Sidesplitting fun throughout for one or a crowd.”

“Come for the funny poems; stay because there’s so much to pore over that you can’t put this collection down.”—The Horn Book

I'm Just No Good at Rhyming is this century's most acclaimed comedic poetry collection so far, described as "a worthy heir to Silverstein, Seuss, and even Ogden Nash" (PublishersWeekly), "wildly imaginative…inspired and inspiring" (Kirkus), and as "everything a book for kids should be" (B.J. Novak). Now, Chris Harris delivers all that and more with dazzling new heights of creativity, kooky conundrums, witty wordsmithing, and of course, wacky laugh-out-loud fun!

There's a whole new cast of characters to meet, from the Nail-Clipping Fairy (who delivers teeth at night), to Orloc the Destroyer (who can be defeated only by his mommy), to the Elderly Caveman (who complains about the younger generation obsessed with playing with fire). There are more mind-bending verbal and visual riddles, plus there's plenty of hilarious hijinks hiding around every corner, whether it's a buffalo that escapes one poem and roams through others or a meteor threatening to land on the book and obliterate everything. There's even a mini book-within-a-book! In between it all, cartoonist Andrea Tsurumi’s diverse range of exuberant people, creatures, and anthropomorphic objects ripple through the pages with playful energy.